Friday, 6 March 2009

Stop abuse of chimps: University of Louisiana research centre abuses chimps.

Chimpanzees are an endangered species, but the New Iberia Research Centre at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, has 300 of these animals, which they use for invasive research, mostly for pharmaceutical companies. The Humane Society of America made an undercover video of treatment of the chimpanzees at this research centre. As a result of this undercover investigation, the Great Ape Protection Act has just been reintroduced in Congress.

"A nine-month-long undercover investigation by The HSUS has exposed the mistreatment of nearly 300 chimpanzees and other primates at the New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) in Louisiana. These chimps, living lives of deprivation and misery, are among the more than 1,000 chimps languishing in laboratories across the United States. Chimps, our closet genetic relative, are complex, social, and long-lived creatures. Many chimps currently warehoused in research facilities have lived for decades behind bars. Especially heartbreaking are stories of the 26 elder chimps at NIRC, who were taken from their mothers in the wild.

The Great Ape Protection Act (H.R. 1326) has just been re-introduced in Congress. This legislation aims to end invasive research on the chimpanzees remaining in laboratories, retire the approximately 500 federally-owned chimpanzees to permanent sanctuary (including the elder chimps at NIRC), and make the recent decision by the National Center for Research Resources (part of the National Institutes of Health) to stop funding the breeding of federally-owned chimpanzees permanent."